Keel raised his attention slowly, painfully to look up at Gallow. “And what Gallow wants, Gallow gets,” Keel said. His voice came out faint and trembling.
“They say you have a digestion problem,” Twisp said, looking down at the familiar figure of the Islander who had served so long as a center of topside life.
One of Keel’s oddly placed eyes moved to take in Twisp, noting the long arms, the Islander stigmata. Twisp’s Islander accent could not be denied.
“You are?” Keel asked, his voice a bit stronger.
“I’m from Vashon, sir. My name’s Twisp, Queets Twisp.”
“Oh, yes. Fisherman. Why’re you here?”
Twisp swallowed. Keel’s skin looked like pale sausage casing. The man obviously needed help, not this demanding confrontation with Gallow. Twisp ignored Keel’s question and turned on Gallow.
“He should be in a hospital!”
A faint smile tugged at Gallow’s mouth. “The Chief Justice has refused medical help.”
“Too late for that,” Keel said. “What’s the purpose of this meeting, Gallow?”
“As you know,” Gallow said, “Vashon is grounded near one of our barriers. They have survived a storm, but took severe damage. For us, they are now a sitting target.”
“But you’re trapped here!” Twisp said.
“Indeed,” Gallow agreed. “But then, not all of my people are with me. Others are placed strategically throughout Merman and Islander society. They still do my bidding.”
“Islanders work for you?” Twisp demanded.
“The C/P among them.” Again, that faint smile touched Gallow’s mouth.
“That’s remarkable after what he did to Guemes,” Keel said. He spoke almost normally, but the effort of sitting upright and carrying it off was apparent. Perspiration dotted his wide forehead.
Gallow pointed a finger at Twisp, eyes glittering. “You have Kareen Ale, fisherman Twisp! Vashon has Vata. I will have both!”
“Interesting,” Keel said. He looked at Twisp. “You really have Kareen?”
“She’s out there in our foil, just within the kelp line where Gallow and his people can’t go.”
“I think Nakano could go there,” Gallow said. “Nakano?”
“Perhaps,” Nakano said.
“The kelp passed him unmolested coming in here,” Gallow said, smiling at Twisp. “Doesn’t it appear likely that Nakano has immunity from the kelp?”
Twisp looked at Nakano, who once more stood passively at one side, obviously listening but not focusing his eyes on any of the speakers.
It came to Twisp then that Nakano did, indeed, belong to the kelp. The big Merman had made some kind of pact with the monster presence in the sea! To Twisp, Nakano appeared the embodiment of Merman killer-viciousness, all of it concealed within a warmly reasonable mask. Was that Nakano’s value to the kelp? There could be no missing the fanatic’s tone when Nakano spoke of the kelp.
“The kelp is my immortality.” That was what Nakano had said.
“Really, there should be no need for violence and killing,” Gallow said. “We are all reasonable men. You have things you want; I have things I want. Surely there must be some common ground where we can meet.”
Twisp’s thoughts darted back to that odd topside encounter with the carpenter, Noah. If that was really the kelp projecting hallucination into his mind, what was the purpose? What was the message?
Slaughter was wrong. Even if Ship commanded it, slaughter was wrong. Twisp had felt this strongly in Noah’s manner and words.
The ark has grounded and the land no longer will be cursed by Ship. Twisp knew vaguely of the ark legend … was there a message from Ship here, sent through the kelp?
Gallow, on the other hand, represented treachery, a man who would do anything to gain his ends. Did the C/P really work for him? If so, an evil pact had been forged.
And what if Noah was just hallucination? Nakano could be right: I might have been narced.
Nakano focused abruptly on Twisp and asked: “Why aren’t you nauseated?”
It was such a startling question, suggesting Nakano had read Twisp’s mind, that Twisp was a moment focusing on the possible implications.
“Are you also sick?” Keel asked, peering up at Twisp.
“I am quite well,” Twisp said. He tore his gaze away from Nakano and looked more closely at Gallow, seeing the marks of self-indulgence in the man’s face, the sly twist of the smile, the frown lines in the forehead, the downturned creases at the corners of the mouth.
Twisp returned then to the knowledge of what he had to do. Speaking slowly and distinctly, directing his words at Gallow, Twisp said: “The imagination of your heart has been evil from your youth.”
Ship’s words as reported by Noah came easily from Twisp’s mouth and once he had said them, he felt their lightness.
Gallow scowled, then: “You’re not much of a diplomat!”
“I’m a simple fisherman,” Twisp said.
“Fisherman, but not simple,” Keel said. A chuckle turned into a weak, dry cough.
“You think Nakano has immunity from the kelp,” Twisp said. “I was his passport. Without me, he would have joined the others. He has told you about the others that the kelp drowned, hasn’t he?”
“I tell you the kelp is out of control!” Gallow said. “We have loosed a monster on Pandora. Our ancestors were right to kill it off!”
“Perhaps they were,” Twisp agreed. “But we’ll not be able to do it again.”
“Poisons and burners!” Gallow said.
“No!” The word was torn from Nakano. He glared at Gallow.
“We will only prune it back to manageable size,” Gallow said, his voice soothing. “Too small a number to be conscious but large enough to preserve our dead forever.”
Nakano nodded curtly but did not relax.
“Tell him, Nakano,” Twisp ordered. “Could you really return to the foil without me?”
“Even if the kelp passed me, the crew probably wouldn’t let me aboard,” Nakano said.
“I don’t see how you’re going to sink Vashon when it’s already aground,” Keel said. A painful smile curved the edges of Keel’s mouth.
“So you think I’m helpless,” Gallow said.
Twisp glanced back at the open hatchway into the passage, the guards clustered there trying to make it appear that they were not listening.
“Don’t your people know how you’ve trapped them?” Twisp demanded, his voice loud and carrying. “As long as you live, they’re prisoners here!”
Blood suffused Gallow’s face. “But Vashon—”
“Vashon is in a perimeter of kelp that you can’t penetrate!” Twisp said. “Nobody you send against Vashon can get through!” He looked at Keel. “Mr. Justice, isn’t that—”
“No, no,” Keel husked. “Go on. You’re doing fine.”
Gallow made a visible attempt to control his anger, taking several deep breaths, squaring his shoulders. He said: “LTAs can—”
“LTAs are limited in what they can do,” Nakano interrupted. “You know what happened to the one I was on. They are vulnerable.”
Gallow looked at Nakano as though seeing the man for the first time. “Do I hear my faithful Nakano correctly?”
“Don’t you understand?” Nakano asked, his voice softly penetrating. “It doesn’t matter what happens to us. Come, I will go into the kelp with you. Let it take us.”
Gallow backed two steps away from Nakano.
“Come,” Nakano insisted. “The Chief Justice obviously is dying. The three of us will go together. We will not die. We will live forever in the kelp.”
“You fool!” Gallow snapped. “The kelp can die! It was killed once and that could happen again!”
“The kelp does not agree,” Nakano said. “Avata lives forever!”
His voice lifted on the last sentence and a wild light came into his eyes.
“Nakano, Nakano, my most trusted companion,” Gallow said, his voice pitched
to its most persuasive tone. “Let us not permit the heat of the moment to sway us.” Gallow sent an apprehensive glance toward the listening guards at the hatchway. “Of course the kelp can live forever … but not in such numbers that it threatens our existence.”
Nakano’s expression did not change.
Keel, watching the scene through pain-glazed eyes, thought: Nakano knows him! Nakano does not trust him!
Twisp entertained a similar thought and knew he had found the ultimate leverage to use against Gallow. Nakano can be turned against his chief.
Gallow constructed a rueful smile, which he turned toward Keel. “Mr. Justice Keel, let us not forget that the C/P is still mine! And I will have the hyb tanks.”
That’s his best shot! Keel thought. “I’ll bet the C/P doesn’t know it was you who sank Guemes,” Keel managed.
“Can anyone carry such an accusation to her?” Gallow asked. He looked blandly around him.
Is that our death warrant? Twisp wondered. Will we be silenced permanently? He decided on a bold attack.
“If we do not return to the foil, they will broadcast that accusation and Bushka’s statement confirming it.”
“Bushka?” Gallow’s eyes showed both shock and glee. “Do you mean Bushka, the Islander who stole our sub?” Gallow smiled at Nakano. “Do you hear that? They know where to find the sub thief.”
Nakano did not change expression.
Gallow glanced at the chrono beside his communications terminal. “Well, well! It’s almost time for the midday meal. Fisherman Twisp, why don’t you stay here with the Chief Justice? I’ll have food sent in. Nakano and I will dine together and consult on possible compromises. You and the Chief Justice can do the same.”
Gallow moved to Nakano’s side. “Come, old friend,” Gallow said. “I didn’t save your life to provide myself with an opponent.”
Nakano glanced at Twisp, the thought plain on the big face. Why did you save my life?
Twisp chose to answer the unspoken question. “You know why.” And he thought: I saved you simply because you were in danger. Nakano already knew this.
Nakano resisted the pressure on his arm.
“Do not quarrel with me, old friend,” Gallow said. “Both of us will go to the kelp in time, but it’s too soon. There’s much yet for us to do.”
Slowly, Nakano allowed himself to be guided from the room.
His muscles trembling so hard that his great head shook with visible tremors, Keel lifted his attention to Twisp. “We do not have much time,” Keel said. “Clear that table at the end of the room and help me to stretch out on it.”
Moving quickly, Twisp swept the objects off the table, then returned to Keel. Slipping his long arms under the Chairman, Twisp lifted the old body, shocked at how light the man was. Keel was nothing but thin bones in a loose sack of skin. Gently, Twisp carried the Chairman across the room and eased him onto the table.
Weakly, Keel fumbled with the harness of his prosthesis. “Help me get this damned thing off,” he gasped.
Twisp unbuckled the harness and slipped the prosthesis away from Keel’s back and shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
Keel sighed with relief. “I prefer to leave this world more or less as I came into it,” he grated, every word draining him. “No, don’t object. Both of us know I’m dying.”
“Sir, isn’t there anything I can do to help you?”
“You’ve already done it. I was afraid I’d have to die in the midst of strangers.”
“Surely, we can do something to …”
“Really, there’s nothing. The best doctors on Vashon have conveyed to me the verdict of that higher Committee on Vital Forms. No … you are the perfect person for this moment … not so close to me that you’ll become maudlin, yet close enough that I know you care.”
“Sir … anything I can do … anything …”
“Use your own superb good sense in dealing with Gallow. You’ve already seen that Nakano can be turned against him.”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“There is one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t let them give me to the kelp. I don’t want that. Life should have a body of its own, even such a poor body as this one I’m about to leave.”
“I’ll—” Twisp broke off. Honesty forced him to remain silent. What could he do?
Keel sensed this confusion. “You will do what you can,” he said. “I know that. And if you fail, I am not your judge.”
Tears filled Twisp’s eyes. “Anything I can do … I’ll do.”
“Don’t be too hard on the C/P,” Keel whispered.
“What?” Twisp bent close to the Chairman’s lips.
Keel repeated it, adding: “Simone is a sensitive and bitter woman and—and you’ve seen Gallow. Imagine how attractive he would seem to her.”
“I understand,” Twisp said.
“I’m filled with joy that the Islands can produce such good men,” Keel said. “I am ready to be judged.”
Twisp wiped at his eyes, still bending close to hear the Chairman’s last words. When Keel did not continue, Twisp became aware that there was no sound of breathing from the supine figure. Twisp put a hand to the artery at Keel’s neck. No pulse. He straightened.
What can I do?
Was there anything combustible here to burn the old body and prevent the Mermen from consigning Keel to the sea? He looked all around the room. Nothing. Twisp stared helplessly at the body on the table.
“Is he dead?” It was Nakano speaking from the hatchway. Twisp turned to find the big Merman standing just inside the room.
The tears on Twisp’s face were sufficient answer. “He’s not to be given to the kelp,” Twisp said.
“Friend Twisp, he died but he need not be dead,” Nakano said. “You can meet him again in Avata.”
Twisp clenched his fists, his long arms trembling. “No! He asked me to prevent that!”
“But it’s not up to us,” Nakano said. “If he was a deserving man, Avata will wish to accept him.”
Twisp jumped to the side of the table and stood with his back to it. “Let me take him to Avata,” Nakano said. He moved toward Twisp.
As Nakano came within range of those long arms, Twisp shot out a net-calloused fist, leaning his shoulder behind it. The blow struck with blinding speed on the side of Nakano’s jaw. Nakano’s heavily muscled neck absorbed most of the shock but his eyes glazed. Before he could recover, Twisp leaped forward and wrenched one of Nakano’s arms backward, intending to throw the man to the deck.
Nakano recovered enough to tense his muscles and prevent this. He turned slowly against Twisp’s pressure, moving like a great pillar of kelp.
Abruptly, the guards swarmed into the room. Other hands grabbed Twisp and jerked him aside, pinning him to the deck.
“Don’t hurt him!” Nakano shouted. The pressures on Twisp eased but did not leave.
Nakano stood over Twisp, a sad look on the big face, a touch of blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Please, friend Twisp, I mean you no harm. I mean only to honor the Chief Justice and Chairman of the Committee on Vital Forms, a man who has served us so well for so long.”
One of the guards pinning Twisp down snickered.
Immediately, Nakano grasped the man by a shoulder and lifted him like a sack of fishmeal, hurling him aside.
“These Islanders you sneer at are as dear to Avata as any of us!” Nakano bellowed. “Any among you who forgets this will answer to me!”
The abused guard stood with his back to a bulkhead, his face contorted with fear.
Indicating Twisp with one thick finger, Nakano said: “Hold him but let him up.” Nakano went to the table and lifted Keel’s body gently in his arms. He turned and strode past the guards, pausing at the hatchway. “When I have gone, take the fisherman to our leader. GeLaar Gallow is topside and has things to say.” Nakano looked thoughtfully at Twisp. “He needs your help to get the hyb tanks—they’re on their way dow
n.”
Chapter 44
Hybernation is to hibernation as death is to sleep. Closer to death than it is to life, hybernation can be lifted only by the grace of Ship.
—the Histories
While Brett held Bushka down, Ale tied off the stump of Bushka’s left arm with a length of dive harness. Bushka lay just inside the main hatch, the sea surface visible through the plaz port behind him. Big Sun, just entering its afternoon quadrant, painted oily coils across the kelp fronds out there, now bright and now dulled as clouds scudded overhead.
A moan escaped Bushka.
The foil rolled gently in a low sea. Ale braced herself against a bulkhead while she worked.
“There,” she said as she tied off the dive harness. Blood smeared the deck around them and their dive suits were red with it.
Ale turned and shouted up the passage behind Brett. “Shadow! Do you have that cot ready?”
“I’m bringing it!”
Brett took a deep breath and looked out the plaz at the quiescent kelp—so harmless-looking, so tranquil. The horizon was an absurd pinkish gray where Little Sun would soon lift into view, joining its giant companion.
It had been a hellish half hour.
Bushka, meandering aimlessly around the pilot cabin, had lulled them into a sense of security by his casual movements. Abruptly, he had dashed down the passageway and hit the manual override on the main hatch. Water had come blasting in at the high pressure of their depth—almost thirty-five meters down. Bushka had been prepared. Standing to one side of the blasting water, he had grabbed an emergency tank-breather outfit stored beside the hatch, slipping swiftly into the harness.
Brett and Panille, running after him, had been spilled and tumbled in the wash of water boiling down the passage. Only Scudi’s alertness in sealing off a section between them and the open hatch had saved the foil and its occupants.
Bushka had kicked easily out into the kelp-jungle where the foil lay on bottom.
Scudi, faced with tons of water in the foil, had blown tanks and started the pumps, shouting for Kareen to help Brett and Shadow. The foil had lifted slowly, floating upward through the massed kelp.
Brett and Panille, splashing their way back into the cabin, had accepted a hand from Kareen. Scudi, seated at the controls, spared a glance for Brett to reassure herself that he was safe, then returned her attention to the watery world visible through the plaz.